Click HERE for the best price available! Or visit the publishers website HERE.

The training tree has been the accepted guide to training horses in any discipline for one hundred years. In Training Tree for Riders, instructor Amanda Berges seeks to fill that role for riders. Each step on the rider training scale is thoroughly explained in terms of why it matters and how each step supports the next. Together, the steps lead you to the ultimate goal of a balanced, fluid, natural rider—regardless of discipline.

Included are multiple exercises for every step, diagnostics to show what the rider needs to work on, how to know when the rider is ready to focus on the next step, and effective and interesting ways of integrating the steps into lesson plans. Whether you are a rider seeking to improve your skills or an instructor looking for ways to help your students improve their riding, the philosophy and exercises in the Training Tree for Riders will help you to develop (yourself or your students) into the kind of rider you want to be.

Amanda Berges has been training horses since 1985 and teaching riding lessons since 1988. She has experience with a variety of disciplines including Western, saddle seat, and sidesaddle, in addition to her specialties of hunt seat and dressage.

Her teaching experience has ranged from children to adults, from backyard farms to national champion show stables and college equestrian programs, and in fact the concept for this book came to her while a member of the equestrian faculty at Lake Erie College.

Always fascinated by teaching in both practice and theory, Amanda has been certified by the American Riding Instructors Association (ARIA) for over a decade. Amanda is also a licensed teacher and a busy horse show judge and clinician. Her articles have appeared in Riding Instructor magazine, ARIA’s official publication, and others.